The status of Weibo movie marketing is long gone.
Editor’s note: This article from the micro-channel public number “Rhino Entertainment” (ID: piaofangtoushijing), of: small blessing, Editor: Park aryl.
The film marketing center of the generation faded away.
Weibo used to be the preferred marketing platform for cinema movies, but with the tilt of the Weibo platform’s own business structure, advertising and marketing all over the platform, the social environment bound by fans, and the ever-decreasing user experience are threatening the microblog The entire community ecology of the blog platform.
On the other hand, the two short video platforms, Douyin and Kuaishou, that have emerged halfway, are also robbing market share while continuing to make efforts in the field of film marketing.
Under internal and external troubles, nowadays, the status of Weibo movie marketing has long gone.
The dilemma of revenue dilemma
The opponent of Weibo is both the short video platform and Weibo itself.
Start with a set of data. According to Weibo’s fiscal 2020 third quarter financial report released in December last year, Weibo’s net revenue for the third quarter of 2020 was US$465.7 million, which was basically compared to US$467.8 million in the same period of the previous year. It was flat, down 4.7% year-on-year; net profit was US$33.8 million, a 76.88% decrease from US$146.2 million in the same period in 2019.
From the perspective of revenue structure, Weibo’s main revenue sources are advertising and marketing services. According to financial report data, in the third quarter of 2020, Weibo advertising and marketing segment revenue was 416.7 million U.S. dollars, slightly higher than the 412.5 million U.S. dollars in the same period in 2019, an increase of 1% year-on-year, and the two businesses accounted for nearly 90% of total revenue.
According to the financial report, in September 2020, the average daily activity of Weibo was 224 million, a net increase of about 8 million over the same period last year. On the other side, according to the latest data released by Douyin, the current daily activity of Douyin has reached 600 million. According to LatePost reports, Douyin’s information flow advertising revenue in 2019 is about 40 billion yuan.
In terms of Kuaishou, due to differences in platform positioning and revenue structure, online marketing services account for a lower percentage of Kuaishou’s total revenue than Weibo and Douyin platforms. According to the prospectus released last year, the revenue of Kuaishou online marketing services in the first half of 2020 was 7.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than twice, and the daily activity data exceeded 300 million.Is increasing.
Under the fierce pursuit of Douyin and Kuaishou, the Weibo platform, which has severely slowed its revenue and daily activity growth, has lost its original advantage. What’s more urgent is that the high degree of simplification and entertainment of the business strategy adopted by Weibo has brought many accumulated drawbacks to the Weibo platform and has begun to threaten the future development of the Weibo platform.
As a graphic community platform, original content was originally an important part of the construction of the Weibo ecosystem. However, under this ecological structure, advertising and marketing are still the main revenue channel of Weibo, with a single business and strong dependence.
Nearly 90% of the advertising and marketing business accounted for Weibo’s business model. In order to increase advertising revenue, Weibo sacrifices content quality and user experience and unrestrainedly releases advertising and marketing content. Functions such as automatic tracking of marketing numbers, frequent advertisements, and serious volume abuse have seriously affected the normal use of users, which in turn led to the reduction of the activity of old users and even loss.
At the same time, in order to strengthen user stickiness and steady data growth, Weibo has seized a life-saving straw called the entertainment industry. The celebrity ecology and fan circle culture preserved the flow of Weibo, and Weibo, which is well versed in the fan economy, relieved the pressure on revenue and the crisis of user loss. But because of this, he was trapped in the high walls of the entertainment industry and couldn’t be abandoned.
Weibo is not a way to break the game. The short video product Miaopai, the live broadcast product Yilive, the social product oasis… From video products to graphic products, Weibo has not stopped. However, the most fundamental community ecology is no longer what it used to be, and Weibo goes round and round, and is still standing still, a vicious circle.
On the other hand, short video platforms that started later are gradually cultivating their own star entertainment ecology. So far, more than 2500 celebrities have settled on the Douyin platform; Kuaishou is also actively working in this field, and has successively signed contracts with many well-known celebrities including Jay Chou, Shen Teng, Chen Kun, and Yang Mi.
The marketing ability to reach the ceiling
The predicament of platform ecology is also directly projected on Weibo’s movie marketing capabilities.
Compared with the short video platform that is still in the development stage, it continues to introduce new gameplays., Weibo movie marketing has basically formed a mature marketing system. In part of the film promotion, the status of the Weibo platform is still irreplaceable.
After ten years of development, the Weibo platform has accumulated a large number of users. The timeliness of its information and the authority of its official account are currently difficult for short video platforms to catch up.
Therefore, Weibo is the preferred platform for publishing the main creation information, shooting progress, release schedule, trailers, posters, and various material videos of movies. Forming a material distribution business that naturally matches the graphic community is a traditional advantage of Weibo movie marketing.
At the same time, based on the platform’s powerful entertainment ecology, Weibo movie marketing also has significant advantages in the field of star and fan marketing. In the Zheng Shuang incident that detonated the entire Internet in the past two days, Weibo played an important role as the first information acquisition place for entertainment incidents. In the field of entertainment content, the Weibo platform’s status as the No. 1 platform is unshakable, and Weibo Hot Search is also unique.
Specific to movie marketing services. In the distribution of movie materials, Weibo often uses topic-matching guidance services to increase movie popularity. During the film’s release period, Weibo, by mobilizing celebrity resources on the platform, called on celebrity big V to pave the word of mouth for the film, and launched celebrity live broadcasts, celebrity sweeps and other diversified publicity methods.
The huge reach of entertainment content can also mobilize fans and KOLs in the first time, broaden the scope of dissemination through a large amount of UGC content output, attract incremental users, and increase the popularity of the film.
Therefore, under such a marketing system, when the service part of Weibo movie marketing can fully mobilize the popular actors of the fan group to lead the project, it will exert a better publicity effect.
For example, the New Year’s Day hit movie “Send You A Little Red Flower” starring Yi Yang Qianxi, has excellent broadcast volume data during the promotion stage, and related topics have repeatedly topped the hot search list. The fantasy movie “The Red Fox Scholar” starring Chen Linong and Li Xian also used publicity methods such as topic creation, sweeping publicity, and online live broadcast to increase the exposure of the film, and related topics appeared in hot searches 17 times.
Similarly, when serving the head projects represented by “My Hometown and Me” and “Jiang Ziya”, the Weibo platform’s campSales performance ability is also relatively stable.
But assuming that Weibo’s star ecology is no longer its unique advantage, then the dominant party will turn into a short video platform by then.
As we all know, short video products have unique advantages such as shorter video length, faster transmission speed, low production threshold, and strong social attributes. Under the same length of time to reach users, short videos can convey a larger amount of information than traditional graphics and text, and avoid the lengthy problem of long videos.
The short video platform not only satisfies the basic marketing functions of Weibo, but also has better functional experience in live broadcasts, materials to the ticket purchase page and other functions than the Weibo platform. In the past two years, Douyin and Kuaishou have continuously strengthened their star ecological layout. Weibo has always been proud of its star ecological advantages and is being pursued by short video platforms to narrow the gap.
In addition, in addition to traditional head projects and popular actors leading films, the short video platform’s ability to produce dark horse movies should not be underestimated. From “The Last Night on Earth” and “Stories More Sad Than Sadness” in the previous two years to “I’m Waiting for You at the End of Time” and “Xibao” after the resumption of work last year, short video platforms have used viral marketing several times to create a movie market explosion. paragraph.
On the other hand, Weibo, its platform tone and active user composition have already determined the upper limit of movie marketing capabilities. In addition to head projects and celebrity projects, projects that lack fan-charming actors and more non-head movies are often lost in the massive information flow of Weibo, making it difficult to reach the target audience.
Today, the daily activity figures of the two major short video platforms, Douyin and Kuaishou, have exceeded Weibo, and the daily activity of Douyin is more than twice that of Weibo. On the premise that platform traffic is not dominant, the limited marketing capabilities make Weibo movie marketing “difficult.”
Can Weibo movie marketing make another success?
Constrained by years of accumulated abuses, the most pressing problem for the Weibo platform now is to find a balance between advertising marketing and content quality. Repeated use of the entertainment ecosystem to cover up the shortcomings of a single business model and long-term dependence on advertising and marketing services have threatened the future of Weibo.
In this “shaky”Under the building, Weibo movie marketing also unknowingly went into adversity. The fast-growing short video platform will undoubtedly become Weibo’s biggest opponent.
Faced with the popular live ticket selling, online roadshows, and viral marketing of short video platforms, can Weibo, which is a major town of traditional movie marketing, be able to find more diversified marketing methods? Further broaden the imagination of film marketing? In the battle for film marketing that has already begun, can Weibo regain its home court?
The direction of this story can only be told by Weibo.